Jon Mark Beilue's Blog

The Houston Chronicle didn't play very nice in an editorial earlier this month when the city's newspaper took some condescending shots at Amarillo. The jibes were interspersed in the eight-paragraph editorial while writing about Jacob Isom stealing the Quran from Repent Amarillo's David Grisham, who was prepared to burn the Islamic Holy Book.

Texas drivers now have an extra letter to make a $395 statement on their vehicles. Until March 11, a 7-letter personalized licence plate -- don't call them vanity plates -- are available at www.myplates.com.

Texas has personalized license plates for 48 years, but only recently crowded the plate to the maximum with a seventh letter. My Plates sells seven-letter plates called Freedom Plates only at certain times of the year and for only -- ta da! -- for seven days.

Imagine turning the corner on the street you live, idling down the block, and then nonchalantly turning into the driveway only to greeted by, what, exactly?

Not your house, but air and a concrete slab on which your house, which had been in the family for decades, had been. That's what happened to David Underwood of Fort Worth on Friday, or very close to it.

Underwood was driving by the vacant three-bedroom ranch-style home near Lake Worth reservoir that belonged to a relative of Underwood's.

1. For those who watched the Texas Tech-West Virginia game on television, they probably don't have a real good grasp on what the delay was about early in the fourth quarter of the Red Raiders' 49-14 dismantling of the No. 5 Mountaineers.

Television makes it a habit of not showing people who run around on playing fields lest they encourage these idiots.

I've been to a ton of football games. I've been to games that started at 10 a.m. and 9:30 p.m., games that were blanketed by snow and ice and suffocated by heat. But last night's or this morning's Tascosa-Lubbock Coronado game was a first.

And, really, I didn't even see it. The things you do -- and don't do -- to watch your son Chad and his team play.

Like certain tweets and posts on Facebook, blogs can get employers in trouble too. Too much information, and then a refusal to keep her blog off line resulted in reporter Shea Allen of WAAY-TV, the ABC affiliate in Huntsville, losing her job last week.

Her free speech got a little too free for management, which told Allen to remove her "Confessions of a Red-Headed Reporter" blog. She did, but then put it back up, and then was terminated.

Her blog consisted of 10 "too-hot-for-TV" revelations about Allen. Among the 10 were:

Eric Winston, chances are, you've never heard of him. But he once played football at Midland Lee as a huge tight end. He was good enough to play for the Miami Hurricanes as a tackle. He has had a decent career as an offensive tackle, the first six seasons with the Houston Texans, and this year with the Kansas City Chiefs.

Sunday, after the Chiefs lost to Baltimore, 9-6, he went off. He attacked the Kansas City fans not for booing beleagured Chiefs quaterback Matt Cassel, but for cheering when he went down with a concussion.

It was shortly after Canyon defeated Caprock, 34-7, last Friday to force a crucial game tonight with Amarillo High that the question was asked:

"When was the last time Amarillo High and Canyon played in football?"

It had been a while, I said. In fact, off the top of my head, I didn't recall the Sandies and Eagles playing in my 31 years here. I asked sports editor Lance Lahnert, and he couldn't remember. Must have been sometimes in the 1970s.